Scene #6663: Storm in a Teacup: Return to Nessos

Owner	Pose
Septette Arcubielle	The building the Elites arrive in is a small industrial transport hub, designed for warping pallets of materials throughout the colony. The walls and floor are painted pastel sloped concrete; a gaping hole blasted in the roof shows the nearby skyline and the dome of force and glass far above that separates Nessos from the starry void. The teleporter that brought them here is a column of metal and crystal surrounded by an outward-spiralling bouquet of halted robotic arms and rails that curve off to sorting and storage areas. The reason that they're halted is that somebody has put a large wrench through one of the control panels. That "somebody" walks up to greet them with a wearied, nervous smile. He's dressed in cargo pants, a high-vis jacket, a red flashlight hard-hat, and makeshift body armor that looks like fine chicken-wire mesh; some manner of laborer, obviously, but he carries himself with a kind of conscious deliberation and grace, as do the handful of other workers busying themselves nearby (most of them tending to the slightly larger handful of wounded convalescing on makeshift cots). He looks like he could be anywhere between twenty and thirty-five. "Dave Grimes," he says, offering each Elite a hasty (and dusty) handshake in turn. "Shouldn't have let it get this bad before we called for help, I know. But the last time we got 'help'..." He grimaces, leans on a railing. "... Well, that's what got us into this. But I'm not gonna recount the, uh, sociopolitical minutiae. It's hell on Earth out there right now." He turns to walk towards one of the hub's many exits and beckons over his shoulder, expecting to be followed. A kludgey, improvised gun repurposed from what looks like welding equipment is slung over his hip. "Here's the deal. This whole place- it's built on an erchius mine," he says as he pushes the door open and steps onto the street. There's a handful of disabled robots, quadrupedal 'spiders' made of pastel polymer polygons, piled near the door. A sick-looking miner's sitting next to them, hugging her knees. Dave gives her a little nod, then gestures at the machines. "Few months back, outsiders muscle in, take the colony, start a dictatorship. So we're fighting 'em." "Problem is, we've got NEOs too. Uh, 'Negative Extraction Outcomes'. Erchius reacts to emotions; the wrong kind of emotions spawns monsters, ghosts. They're an occupational hazard, but... I've never heard of any this bad. We came in an hour ago to bust up the drone fabber north of here and smash-and-grab some data, but the drones were holding off the NEOs. Now we've forced the district on quarantine and everything's fucked. Can't get out of here until we've taken care of both problems; if we just blow up the fabber and run, the NEOs might kill everybody here."
Septette Arcubielle	Which leaves the Elites at their leisure- or as much "leisure" as exists in a de facto warzone- to explore the district, in all its Flotilla-renovated and Septette-optimized glory. The drone fabricator that Grimes wants destroyed is a dark rectangular building with a keypad and a heavily-reinforced door due North of where they warped in, but simply destroying it now could cause the monsters to overwhelm the defenders, with catastrophic results for the civilians. It might be wiser to search-and-destroy the "NEOs" first. Urban architecture here is a little like the draftsmen laid out a perfect city, and then got in a drunk fight about it. It's relatively simple, and fairly modular- lines feed fuel to tanks, which feed into generators, distributing power to a block or two at a time. Everything is walkable, entirely absent any sort of vehicle besides on-rails transit. And it all has that look of prefab chunks, deployed in simple squares, designed to scale indefinitely, plopped over and overwriting bits of old Letheia infrastructure. In fact, so directly that chunked-out halves of old Letheia machines can be found, sliced cleanly as if someone exchanged a certain cube of space without regard for what was there. That is not the messed up part. The messed up part is the aesthetic. Everything has a relatively uniform, modular structure, but after that, it looks like someone had to decide on archtectural aesthetics, and nobody could quite find a unified design. A lot of old Letheia materials are recycled, evoking the feeling of a mine interior or a factory floor, but some of it has been reshaped, identifying features brushed down, into militarized, hardened spaces, turning residences into something that somehow looks more like barracks; Soviet brutalism comes to mind. There are areas where small oxygen generation facilities are being progressively overgrown by large trees, scattering smaller biological oxygen generation systems throughout the city environment haphazardly, almost fractally into structures where they, too, scatter smaller plant life. Water filtration takes an elegant turn, as optimized water, purified of contaminants and then thoroughly enhanced with "not contaminants" flows freely in visible pipes and through elegant fountains; each fountainhead is the beachhead of an architectural invasion to reshape everything with paper, ornate wood, and stylish environmentally-conscious eastern design. Urban features of the environment have recycled much of the mining byproduct; big stone bricks formed out of the asteroid's own material line the roads, the walkways, the foundations, and many of the newer, less industrial structures all around. And, of course, in an erchius mine, everything besides erchius is irrelevant. Elaborate gold, silver, and etched exotic stone give centers of the community and internal commerce an almost religious feeling.
Septette Arcubielle	In places where the drones and NEOs have been fighting, the signs are obvious: stains of purple and blue paint the walls in explosive splatters, and drones are transfixed on brass tridents or spears like trophies of Vlad the Impaler. Civilians are holed up inside the fortified buildings, only occasionally stealing terrified glances from behind the curtains; the monsters have been too busy chewing on the robotic defenders to put any coordinated effort into breaching them. The current fighting is centered around two areas. The first is a park, where trees crowd around a wood-chip-carpeted playground strewn with damaged playsets and smoking craters. Somebody's pet dog, a big Saint Bernard, is frantically dashing back and forth at the edge of the fighting; nobody's paying it any mind, but it seems terrified out of its wits and unwilling to run. The second is a gaping hole in the street, where some dramatic explosion has blown open a water main and mixed it with burning gas and oozing liquid erchius. This one's solidly held by the monsters, which have set up a thorny perimeter of magically electrified spears to fend off their opponents; they seem to be using the open main to spread contaminants, with one of their number hunched over the tubes and spreading a blue tint through the translucent pipes and fountains "downstream". The drones are simple in construction: four limbs arrayed around a central body, looking friendly and innocent like something assembled out of polygonal legos. They rear back on three legs to aim a leg-mounted energy blast at intruders; an electrifying 'stun' beam for the Elites, or a much more powerful 'kill' mode for the NEOs. The "Negative Extraction Outcomes" are immediately recognizable to anyone who was on the earlier foray to Nessos. They're black silhouettes in the shape of hunched humanoids or air-swimming mermaids, carrying bronze tridents and communicating via nauseating staticky shrieks. All of them are smaller and certainly less formidable than what they faced before, but the portent is unmistakable. The Deep Ones are loose in Nessos.
Android 17	Android Seventeen is with the rest of the Elites to come with the group. While not actively emoting much, right now he's trying to process the situation inside the place, as well as come to terms with what he will need to do in here. There is a matter of accepting that some things need to kill to live, but in this case, that thing was people (himself included) and there seemed to be little choice in this matter. He takes the hand of Dave Grimes, and gives it a firm shake. "Android Seventeen," he says, pleasantly. before walking and listening to the guy as he explains the situation. NEOs are engaged with drones, if they just take out the drones then the NEOs eat everyone. Of course, no matter what, the drones would turn on them the moment the NEOs are dead with the reverse being true as well. Seventeen's eyes narrow as he can hear the dog bark, and spot the people trapped near the warzone. "Those people need to be gotten out of there. Or else we're going to be having to hold ourselves back against an enemy that does not have the same compunctions in their safety. If they're so distracted, then we could probably get them out before the battle is finished, and then work on the NEOs." There is more to this story too than he knows, and dislikes it.
August Kohler	August Kohler is here, dressed in a jacket, openly armed witrh a revolver, a combat knife, and a mirrored wrist bracelet. As they approach, August nods to Dave Grimes. "August Kohler." After he hears the pitch, he nods, and then heads off, replying to Android 17 as he gets an eye on things. "The civilians are barricaded. The robots don't want them dead. We focus on the NEOS first, then take out the borgs - if you want to save the civilians first, you can, and I commend it, but it's not the only option." As he makes his way through, August summons Dietrich with a glance at the mirror. "Persona!" The power armored black knight manifests, and August leaps on his back. Of the two areas... August decides to slam full-speed towards the big hole. Stun bursts are doubled around, though one hits, shocking August and his Persona and nearly causing them to barrel into a building, before they get towards the monster-focused area. To deal with the spears, Dietrich ignites its thrusters, and bursts into the air (jumping, not flying) over them, shooting blasts of darkness at any monsters in sight, coming off of Dietrich's massive gear sword. First determination: are there civilians who'd get killed if August ignited the gas? He needs to know whether he can use fire.
Staren	Staren beams in and shakes Dusty's hand and... huh. He was expecting that returning to Nessos would mean dealing with Septette and/or Abyssals. Instead it's... a revolution between two OTHER factions, worsened by Erchius (why did it suddenly get worse?) Well. Now that he's not dealing with Abyssal memetic hazard bullshit that turns everything against him, Staren calls in reinforcements. A squad of humanoid drones with caseless assault rifles and HEAP micromissile launchers to buy the miners time if any NEOs sneak past the elites, as well as a fresh caseless SMG with smart material rounds and an underbarrel foam micromissile launcher for every able-bodied miner who wants one. Staren makes his way to investigate the area and the drone fabber. DING Conversation with Christina Wiremu and Michael Wiremu Mom This creature is fascinating! I'm finding miniature brains all along the spinal cords, but also completely disconnected from the rest of the nervous system! And the stuff in the circulatory system isn't blood, but some kind of hydraulic structural element! I think it may have had a sort of psionic circulatory system! Distributing energy to various parts of its body through a psionic link. When cells died and metabolic waste products built up, it just kind of... let a piece of flesh die, then grew it again with bio-regeneration! The parasites were probably able to exchange energy with the body's psionic network. The Multiverse continues to surprise me every day! Dad They finally found a good way to cook it. I'm going to bring a tupperware container of pulled kaiju home, you should come by and try some. Thanks! Right now I'm in the middle of saving space miners from monsters and dictators though but I'll come by later. Abrupt cutoffs just seem like a sign of matter manipulators. The fractal utilities are a little weirder. Maybe they had units in various sizes and wanted to use them all? Staren collects a sample of 'enhanced' water for analysis. When he finds the civilians, he calls for his own drones to drop by with more SMGs. And then drones try to stun him. "Hey! I'm on your side!" And then he sees the strange, staticky creatures. Goddamnit Septette WHY. REALLY BAD MONSTERS Nearly everything else has to be secondary. Staren cancels the last order of guns -- these civilians need to stay hiding. But before confronting the abyssals, there's one thing he can do: Go 'downstream', dig up the water main, and seal it off with the matter manipulator. They can fix it later, and he can't allow the contamination to spread. "Good idea, Seventeen. Get them away from here."
Septette Arcubielle	"Those buildings are fifteen-plus inches reinforced concrete," Dave says to 17, his eyebrows pushing the brim of his hard-hat up a few degrees. "I think those folks are safe from the NEOs in there. What kind of firepower have you got that you're worried about that kinda collateral?" Dave doesn't argue any further, though; in fact, he'll accompany 17 door-to-door to put a friendly local face on the request. The civilians seem shaken, obviously- but significantly less frightened, and more willing to listen, than they "ought" to be. That doesn't go over Grimes' head, either; he makes a bit of a face while dealing with them. Within a couple of minutes, they'll have emptied out the residential buildings and shepherded everyone into the basement of the building. It's probably two hundred people in this neighborhood, all told. There aren't any civilians in the way of August's heroism- but there is one injured rebel miner within the potential blast radius, his leg mangled by a bronze spear, being dragged away by the drones! Most of the lesser Deep Ones try to run and dive out of the way of his darkness assault, only to be destroyed anyway; a single one slightly taller than the others rears up and blocks the diffuse attack head-on with its gilded staff, then retaliates with a machine-gun-like burst of magical icicles aimed for Dietrich's chest. From where August stands, he'll be able to see that the labyrinthine hole in the road goes deep- really, really deep. It taps into the caverns that honeycomb the asteroid beneath. The miner, wrestling futilely with the drones, sees it too... and seems to prioritize it over his own life. "Take the shot now! Just do it!" Nearly all of the miners seem immensely grateful for Staren's guns, even if they eye his robots with a bit of Luddite-ish suspicion; only one or two of them have anything of remotely comparable quality already. One of them even had something that just looked like a repurposed circular saw. The drones seem to prioritize shooting at the Deep Ones over him, but still take opportunistic pot-shots and don't show any spark of recognizing him as a potential ally; whatever AI is running them, it's pretty simplistic. Funnily enough, they even try shooting his humanoid robots with their 'stun' beams instead of their 'kill' blasts. When he reaches the 'downstream' water supply, he'll find that there's already a cutoff system in place, but not activated. Whether he chooses to co-opt that built-in valve or make his own plug, he succeeds in severing the flow and preventing further contamination! No sooner has he accomplished that, though, than something tries to pounce on him! It's that terrified dog- whining with fear, but trying to tug him in the general direction of the playground. A gaggle of Septette's drones seem to be holding down the area tenuously, but the Deep Ones are making a strong effort to break through there.
Android 17	"Several high powered elites with ground shattering abilities and can also shoot literal evaporating darkness blasts," he motions towards August, who demonstrates for him his point. "Besides there could be others in there that may need medical or may be cut off from necessities. Also, those things feed on fear...removing a source of food from their local area seems to be a better plan than pushing your luck." Seventeen stays with Dave, focusing on trying to keep people safe, and staying nearby the evacuation to provide his shield to those who need it. He does not agress towards either drone nor horror, instead of keeping his movements defensive, and only attacking if they are looking like they're about to. Their not so heightened fear causes the Android to frown. He can see that Dave picks up on it too, and putting two and two together shouldn't be a stretch. Seventeen will also do a pass, using his heightened hearing to make sure nobody got left behind.
August Kohler	Well, this is nasty. While he starts hurting various Deep Ones, a big one blocks his attack and sxtarts launching icicles at Dietrich's chest. They impact with the armor, shearing a wound, but it starts repairing quickly - which drains a lot of energy from August, based off the central attack. August notices the miner being dragged away. The miner asks August to fire. This is difficult. August bites his lip, considers, and weighs it over. If he fires, he'll kill a man. If he doesn't, more monsters attack. In the past...he would have saved the man, immediately. But now, it's harder. The man's willing to die for his cause. Why would August deny that, when he'd fight for the same for himself? Why would he risk more of the monsters attacking the civilians, or overwhelming the city? This is the most direct option, and it's one he has to take. August takes a breath, and then shouts to the man. "What's your name?" After the miner replies, or a bit afterwards in case he can't or won't reply, Dietrich boosts up again, right out of the gas, and points the sword at it again. A massive spray of fire bursts out to ignite the gas and take the monsters to hell. They can't be suffered to live, or escape, or spread.
Gideon Kaspar	"Wow look up there! We're in space! We really are in space!" "That's what an asteroid is. Otherwise it'd be a meteor you know." "And we'd be dead." "Ah, that reminds me, please make sure to check your doors and corners so that none of them lead outside." "'Please'? Come on, a unit leader needs to have more backbone than that!" "R-right." "Ladies, ladies, please focus!" Gideon goes right the heck up to David Grimes and shakes his hand like a professional, despite the contrast of dusty work gloves and pinned suit cuffs. "A skirmish over rare mine deposits. Now that's a classic. All the way back to the Bronze Age over tin! If I can ask, my good miner, why is it in your best interests to destroy the drones? Symbol of an imperialist occupying power? They must be pretty wealthy if they're funding an all drone occupational movement, but then rich people do love throwing taxpayer money around!" He's hhhalf joking, getting good laugh out of it. "We'll talk about getting you properly equipped later. Can't have a guerilla underground resistance using whatever they can scrape up for long. You need a proper outside benefactor looking to destabilize the current regime." Another laugh. Probably a joke. Maybe. From there, Gideon badgers as much of a map as he can out of someone, and has the Anti-Rain unit spread out and set up along various point, to acquire a combined field of view that can keep the group apprised of what's happening around the main hot zones. The water main is a more entrenched position, which he tells the girls to leave to the other Elites trying to play shock troops, despite Clover's initial protests. Instead, he wants to take advantage of the fighting in progress to deal as much damage as quickly as possible while both sides are unprepared to defend themselves against two enemies at once. The playground is immediately bombarded with hails of automatic fire from two points a surprising distance down two different streets, concealed in vegetation and water features, emptying hundreds of bullets into the area and continuing long past the point an actual machine gun would have to stop and reload. Specialized, sweeping, anti-horde shooting cuts through the melee, hyper-accurately scything down dense groups of enemies with overpowered anti-android ammunition. A third shooter attacks from higher up, using decorative stone as a vantage point, placing precise bursts of Hollywood-style suppressed gunfire into targets of opportunity, largely prioritizing NEOs that look to be in a position to break through, or are concentrated on finishing off drones. A last shooter from a heavy industrial bulkhead pounds the area with a trio of extremely powerful anti-personnel grenades, hitting the densest clusters of enemies with high explosives and daisy cutter patterns of shrapnel. It's an all angles assault tactically and mechanically designed to wipe out huge numbers of enemy grunt units ASAP.
Staren	Convenient shutoff valve. Handy. Staren uses the valve and then freezer foams it in the 'closed' position and leaves a spy drone just in case something comes by to mess with it later. And then, dog! "Sorry, boy, not now." He flies back to the combat area on thrusters, then, seeing that August's fighting some of them, goes to contain the others at the playground. Which is where the dog is leading him, anyway. and then BULLETS, SO MANY BULLETS. Staren flies up above them, "Woah!" He's a little concerned. The dog seems to indicate someone may be trapped here who may have been just gunned down. But first he has to verify if the static-mermaid-things are still here, and then either kill them (beam cannons and the rest of his pile o' guns are ready) or at least confirm that the T-dolls' attack has got them pinned down, before he can save anyone.
Septette Arcubielle	The miner stares at August for a moment, a complex wash of emotions coming over his face. It's enough, momentarily, to wipe away the grimace of pain from his injuries. "J-Joshua. Joshua Grimes." As soon as they realize what he's trying to do, the Deep Ones open up on August and the drones try to shield Joshua's body. Neither are successful. The volatile mixture of gas, liquid erchius, and eldritch blood goes up in a column of fire that rattles the ground. When the smoke clears, half the street is sunken and the hole is entirely filled in with rubble. The reinforcements are wholly cut off. (Somewhere, Septette is probably proud.) With the ones in the hole obliterated and no new Deep Ones joining the fray, the Dolls' offensive mangles what NEOs are still on the ground, essentially mulching all the enemies that aren't lucky enough to already be behind cover relative to their multiple vantage points. The drones prove a little more resilient as a faction: they're totally outclassed by the Dolls, partly because of their inferior intelligence and partly because they staunchly refuse to use their 'Kill' mode on anything that looks remotely like a person, but with the fabricator building still running in overdrive there's a steady trickle of new ones joining the fight. With the NEOs more or less wiped out, it's probably safe- and necessary- to go for the throat on the fabber. The Deep Ones and drones do occasionally harass 17 and Dave while they escort the civilians: the Deep Ones go directly for the vulnerable people, who react with dulled alarm before being saved by the Android's shields, while the drones try to chip away at the pair directly with their stun blasts when they aren't otherwise occupied. Dave's chickenwire-like armor, oddly enough, seems to diffuse their stun beams to little effect; he's even able to pull his own weight offensively with one of Staren's high-tech guns. The dog whiiines at Staren again, then dashes off without him. The only enemies that are left to intercept him in flight are a lucky surviving pair of air-swimming creatures that menace him with cutting magical ice projectiles and briefly try to dogfight with him, devoid of any sense of self-preservation. They're fairly agile and bitey, but go down as soon as he's able to land a solid beam-cannon meatshot on them. 17's heightened hearing (and, as Staren gets closer, perhaps his hearing too) picks up on something unusual: crying and murmuring, coming from the playground. Specifically, coming from beneath a dome-like climbing set. If he enters, he'll find two kids- an older sister and a younger brother- huddled in the corner, with light streaming in through the handholds in the dome. The girl has her hands over her brother's ears while he hugs his knees, scared by the sounds outside. They both seem impossibly oblivious to the Deep One hunched in front of them, drinking in their fear only a few feet away. The dog arrives just a fraction of a second after the Elites do, and draws the beast's attention by growling at it angrily...
August Kohler	August winces as he hears the name. Dave's not going to be happy with him, so August won't bother him when they're done. Whether brother, son, or whatever he is he's gone, as Dietrich pulls back. The next destination is the fabber. <"Heading to the fabber. Could use backup to blow it sky high."> On the way, drones in the way are ruthlessly slashed at in melee combat, which Dietrich is /much/ more efficient at than ranged. The goal is to just force his way into the fabber, find the core control unit, and try and attack it. This is an insane plan, because there'll be a million drones there. He'll need backup, or alternatively, to play Sundance Kid.
Android 17	Seventeen is good at shielding, using the shield effectively against both Drone and legally distinct chuthulu. Stun blasts doing next to nothing against the Android Barrier, while lashing horrors may do a little more, he focuses on defense while Dave can line up shots. Seventeen grits his teeth, this is starting to really irritate him in a not normal way. Even he can't put his finger on it. He hears something, his eyes widening when he realizes it. "Dave hold things here for a second, I won't be long," he says in a hurry, and dashes away in a burst of speed. In fact, to people like Dave it'd look like he just vanished. Seconds later the dog follows him, and as he enters the dome he goes for the monster just a bit away from them. There is a flash of horror in his eyes before he regains his composure. There is a tightening in the chest of the android, who is trying to keep his emotions suppressed. He moves to pick the children up, one in each hand, and then creates the android barrier again, trying to carry the two of them towards the exit, and then takes flight. "It'll be okay, you two. What're your names?" he says, trying to coax them out of whatever spell the monster had them in. "I'm Android Seventeen, you can just call me Seventeen," he says, putting on a brave face for them. Things are just going to hell around them.
Staren	Every abyssal in sight must be destroyed or locked down. They CAN'T risk the war that once ravaged Septette's world starting again. Staren stops to dogfight, relieved that these go down easier. Are they just a weaker 'type' of abyssal or have they not had as much time to feed and grow? Questions that will have to be asked later. Two down, he makes his way to the playground, where there are kids and an abyssal just sitting there feeding. Well, he'll take an opportunity when he's handed one. As 17 moves in, Staren pulls the sniper rifle from his back, takes aim, and tries to line up a shot on the creature's center of mass. Simultaneously firing a three-pulse burst from the laser and both particle cannons for a triple-shot punch!
Gideon Kaspar	"Ah, hold on! There are human lifesigns in the firing zone!" "Huh? But it was just getting to the good part." The bawling children are quickly picked up as the hordes of enemies surrounding them is whittled down, exposing the thermal blobs of living people through the climbing dome. "It's fine. I can shoot around them." Violet stubbornly intones, and actually makes good on it by doing extreme precision sharpshooting. Her gun, using stealth blackout rounds, is quiet enough to not add much to the chaos, and the A-R team in particular is 'actually designed up to military spec' in terms of robot abilities. Her accuracy is absolutely preturnatural, and she uses it to cover Android 17 from drones on the way in, despite their pre-programmed insistence on stun beams. Rose actually listens and stops blasting the area with grenades though, albeit begrudgingly. "So, commander. What are we doing about that factory?" Hazel radios. "You know, I almost wish I contracted the 404 for this. Hacking and sabotage would be a great benefit right now, but those rates . . . oh well. Even if we've pacified the area for now, destroying it completely robs us of a primary tactical asset if another wave shows up later, but we don't have the personnel right now to repurpose it. Prioritize shutting down assembly, leaving as much machinery intact as possible. Mop up the area, and then I'll pull some strings and call some specialists to retrofit it into a guerilla asset." "You really don't miss an opportunity huh? I see why you got promoted so fast now." "You don't like it?" "Nah, it sounds fine to me. It'll keep Rose out of trouble, and it's simple enough for Clover to wrap her head around. Besides, we don't have enough charges for something that squat; I can feel it." The four T-Dolls rapidly fall in with August, surrounding him with 'actual tactical professionals' who keep up a brisk pace with all four quarters covered, alternating between downtilted weapons for field of view and snap leveled shots for gunning down stragglers that get in the way, informing each other of each contact and clear, and generally keeping him out of trouble. "The objective outlined by the commander is to shut down the factory, not destroy it. We probably don't have the means to do that anyways, so disabling the production line will be quicker and more efficient. Later, the miners can use it to build drones that will defend their territory. Does that sound agreeable to you?" Clover asks August pretty directly, albeit in the tone of a radio operator asking a soldier to confirm the order they received. From there, they look for the most accessible interest, and begin analyzing the industrial equipment inside, looking to follow the production flow backwards and consoles where it can be shut off, or failing that, critical components that can be broken off to halt it with as little damage as possible.
Septette Arcubielle	Dave doesn't have many words for August on the radio, but his emotions are almost palpable. Giving him space is likely the best choice for both of them. The Deep Ones, nearly extirpated at this point, don't offer any resistance to his charge. The drones only fare slightly better, weaving their stun beams together into a kind of "capture net" and trying to snag Dietrich's limbs as the knight rushes past, but ultimately getting shredded by his blade. What does stop August and the T-Dolls is the facility itself. Before they can start on the problem of how to access the reinforced keypad-locked door, the entire small-house-sized cubical structure unfolds chunky crab-like legs from its corners and opens the side walls to reveal racks of stocked drones. The lesser robots swarm around their bigger cousin like a layer of ablative armor while peppering the would-be intruders with stun beams; the fabricator itself doesn't seem to come with a "less-than-lethal" option installed, and opens its front door to deploy an oversized wide-angle beam cannon that sweeps across the area in front of it like a searing scan. "Please desist from trespassing, citizen," it booms in a nauseatingly cheery-calm voice. Staren's three-shot burst, plus any offense that 17 happens to throw the monster's way, fell it- but not until the third shot, and even then it staggers forward a single step before collapsing. That seems to answer Staren's scientific question about their nature. The children flinch at the sudden violence (fortunately oblivious to the precision gunfire right outside), seeming more scared of that than they were of the horrible creature- even when it's dead and dissolving into a puddle, they barely spare it more than a dull glance. The girl wraps her arm around 17's neck and pulls her brother up by the waist. "Hi, Seventeen," she says, in a voice like she's been crying. "I want to go home." Before he can take flight, the dog hops up, putting both of its paws on the boy's back and wagging nervously. The kid just squirms away.
Android 17	Seventeen holds the little girl, nodding to her. The boy looks...he sighs, a bit more shell shocked by the whole experience. The dog trying to get his attention as he places a hand down on the dog's head. He looks towards the boy, "What's his name? He seems to like you a lot because he ran in to save you both." Seventeen can't carry both the kids and the dog, so he decides against flight and simply starts carrying them on foot back towards the group. "We'll try and get you home as quickly as possible, let's look for your parents first, Ok? What's your mother or father's name? I'll get you to them." Seventeen nods towards Staren, thankful for the help. It would be hard to get them all to safety and hold them at the same time, so someone running interference was always a big help.
August Kohler	Dietrich is almost tripped up by the net, shocked further and draining August of more energy, but manages to get to the building with the gun girls. There, the building reveals legs, which causes Dietrich to back up, and then releases a swarm of robots and a massive beam cannon. It rips into Dietrich's armor, August hiding behind its back to avoid getting hit himself, but bleeding out his nose from the sheer pressure of trying to heal that much damage as it tears armor apart. "Shit, shit!" But despite that, the superhuman Persona withstands the cannon, and tries to push forward through the stuns. "If you can keep the drones and beams off me, I can erase the door!" August shouts to his 'partners', and then, Dietrich lifts its sword, and tries to get past the drones towards the door. If he can hit the door with the sword... Darkness surges out of the sword and into the door itself. It moves to eat away and erase it entirely, as if it was never there, corroding it to nothing. In the process, he'll probably get shot a lot. August is not a careful boy.
Gideon Kaspar	"What the fu-" "Aaaaa no fair! That's so cool! But it's totally in our way! I can't stand it! I wanna blow it up!" "T-take cover!" "That's obvious!" When the drone factory gets up, even the A-R team scrambles for cover, breaking off at . . . well, turns out they were only keeping August's pace for his benefit. They move fucking fast, scattering in four directions and bolting at superhuman speed, ducking and dodging through the hail of stun beam fire, Rose getting clipped on the way out and Hazel stopping to pick her up, shielding the pair by slinging the massive slab of an armoured rectangular container off her shoulder and out in front of her like a barricade. Violet reaches a shooting point first, unscrews her suppressor and switches her magazine in a single double slapping motion, swapping to loud automatic to start on the smaller drones ASAP. Clover slides behind a section of fortified industrial water piping next and does the same from her side. Hazel hauls Rose out while the blonde shakes her claw-like left fist and yells "I'll get you for this! A hundred times over!" and shoves her into an alleyway. Pulling the pin from an unmarked metallic cylinder, Hazel underhand pitches it, sliding and skittering down the street, until it lands in the middle of the swarm, and lets off a massive scrambling pulse --not a shitty ~EMP~ expecting to fry real electronics, but a mess of high intensity ionizing charge and a lasting scatter of sensory overloading stimuli, specifically designed to fuck over enemy T-Dolls and military mechanicals. "Commander! Permission to use 'that'?" "Denied. We need that factory in one piece, remember?" "It grew legs and is walking around firing lasers!" "So get creative. You're supposed to be the best, right?" "Damn right we are." "Everyone! Connect to my ETCH assist!" Clover calls out, which the other Dolls copy with affirmative lights, creating a brief burst of secure network traffic while they use esoteric extra switches on their firearms. When they resume shooting, an additional Fire Command module has somehow overlocked their shooting output, each of them blazing away until their muzzles turn red hot, swapping out magazines so fast that there is essentially no interruption in the fire. They prioritize and swap targets seamlessly, making sure each one is shooting a different drone at any given time without communication lag, precisely calculating ways to overpenetrate them and hit several in a row with piercing ammunition with the power of four mini-DOOM-esque shooter protagonists. Once the horde is thinned out a little, Rose swaps out her underbarrel launcher, and fits on some kind of single use, disposable rocket tube. Popping up, she yells "Hahaha! Let me hear you wail in pain you giant scrap heap! I'll pull off those legs one by one! Die! Die!" in a 'she literally has Nui's voice actor' way, and fires an anti-mech (the stompy kind) missile directly into that reinforced door, unleashing a focused, piercing macro charge into the entry. From there, the objective appears to be . . . running right up to it and jumping in. They'll deploy grapnel wires to deal with the factory being on legs, mashing through the QTE sequence to get inside.
Staren	It melts. A memory brought to life by erchius. The kids are safe. "Are you gonna take them back to the others?" Staren checks with 17, there's no time to stick around and chat more. Staren takes off to DING Dad It's just a shame this cookout is humans-only. They need more people to eat all this thing. Staren takes off to fly towards the drone factory DING Dad Uh-oh, the smell is attracting predators. Mom Need me to stop studying this for a bit and help with that? Dad Nah I think I got it with the Star Hawk. Probably overkill. Just gonna be weird fighting alongside dead boys. Feel free to jump in if it looks like we're getting overwhelmed Mom Ok STAREN TAKES OFF TO FLY TOWARDS THE DRONE FACTORY and what do? What even do. It'd be a bit much to deploy enough weaponry to blow the whole thing up... Fortunately, the T-Dolls have a plan: Shoot the door then run in. Sounds good! Later: Look a drone factory <picture> it's also a drone factory
Septette Arcubielle	The boy removes his face from 17's shoulder and looks up at him with red-teary eyes. "He's Elvis," the kid says, in the half-blubbery tone of someone being reluctantly coaxed out of crying. "He has a flea collar," he adds, like that's the most important fact at the moment. "Kelly and Norm," his sister answers, a little slower to be eased out of her state but still visibly recovering. They weren't shellshocked- it's like the horror of their life-and-death encounter just slid off of them like water off of a duck's back. The boy even giggles a little when the dog tries to lick his shoe. In the milling disorganization of the logistics center, reuniting them with their parents won't be an easy task- but when he manages to find them, the parents thank 17 profusely when they're not too busy hugging their kids and giving the dog an ear-scruffle. The fabber-crab tries to maneuver around Dietrich's charge and retracts its main gun protectively, but its klutzy Boston Dynamics moves are abruptly halted by the girls' sabotage grenade, which momentarily locks it rigidly in place. Dietrich's sword comes down and carves through the door, obliterating its reinforced metal hull and leaving a stark hole behind. A moment later, the rocket streaks through the hole and blows out the main beam cannon behind it, disabling- at least for now- the fabber's primary threat. The drones are no match for the girls' coordinated gunplay, but there's a fast enough stream of them to keep them at least casually busy: one every few seconds in emergency production mode, via the miracles of Crafting Game Protagonist Technology. A single Deep One survivor watches them from a rooftop, trying to be sneaky; it waits until after Rose has taken her shot and then leaps down trident-first to try and score a backstab, its bloodthirstiness overwhelming any kind of tactical sense. Inside, the fabber is half building and half guts-of-a-machine. There's only one "room", which the obvious red-glowy AI core is conveniently in the center of, practically begging to be stolen- but swirling laser beams scythe through the air around it while the room spins and tumbles from the fabber's external thrashing, like a bad combination of a rave and Disneyland teacups. To make matters worse, these are the "flesh-searing" model of laser beams, not the "klaxxon alarm" kind! It's time for heist acrobatics.
Staren	"DIE!" Staren fires at the deep one, and then turns on his forcefield and goes for a ram to knock it off Rose. He glances back at her, and at the inside of the fabber. "Hmh." Did the Captains build that? Oh well. He'll stay out here and fight the deep one, then search the area for any more trying to hide. Or help others fight the fabber factory, if anyone decides to stay outside and do that.
Gideon Kaspar	"Look out behind you!" Clover calls to Rose, but the other T-Doll is too absorbed to notice much going on, only turning around with a late "Huh?" when it's essentially already past the point of salvaging. Once again it's Hazel that throws herself into harm's way, blocking the trident on the section of armoured exo over her arm, breaking off in sparking pieces and causing her forearm to slip between the prongs of the trident. She stays there wrestling with the creature's polearm for several seconds, before Staren tackles it off her, and a wordless shot from Violet from 50 meters is put straight into the creature's head --then two more in the chest --and a second back in the head. Hazel falls over backwards. "Next time just shoot instead of shouting warnings." she says, catching her breath from the exertion, and purging the support exo from the shoulder. "Hey hey, it was my fault for not paying attention!" "Oh just shut up and keep going." Once they're inside though, the laser field gives even the A-R team room for pause. "Uh, what the heck do we do about that?" Rose asks aloud, scratching her cheek with her non-DARPA hand. "Beats me. Maybe that August would like to be a shield." "You know we can't harm humans in that way, Violet. We'll think of something." Gideon looks through the direct video feed and suggests "Obviously, try looking for the laser emitters first. After that, tear up some of the paneling and try using it as a mobile shield. We don't want 'that' getting damaged." "Right. Good idea commander." The T-Dolls begin fanning out around the room at a safe distance from the laser rave, until they have an idea whether they're plausible to shoot. Given a brief gap in the pattern, Violet is put up to precision sharpshoot lenses out so long as they're big enough to actually fit a bullet into. Hazel and Clover coordinate on tearing out a slab of floor or wall with powered knife action, getting an impromptu riot shield of metal each, to cover a run through the laser fuckfest, ideally with August in the middle.
Android 17	Seventeen continues to chat with them, mostly trying to get them back into good spirits. Though he's careful about pushing them, only slight nudges and patience. " Elvis huh? That's a good name, and a flea collar is important. Fleas are the worst, I can tell you that. In the woods, they tend to not discriminate between animals and people." Seventeen nods to the little girl, "We'll find them. I was working with Dave to get all of the people away from the danger," He says, taking note of their reactions, how they're dealing. It's not shellshocked, it's something else, and he isn't versed enough in this kind of thing to really get the right symptoms down. He, with some effort, finds the parents. A tearful reunion does a wonder on Seventeen's heart, and he waves them off. "Hey, I am involved in this kinda thing all the time...the real hero is Elvis, who tried to get help for them and then even tried to fight off one of the horrors while I got them out. He's a good boy," he says, and then waves. He'll probably be late to the party, but he immediately flies off towards the factory. His smiling face is returned to the very cold one. He's trying to resolve the feelings in himself, right now all he wants to do is hit Septette /really really hard/. He'll settle for horror terrors and then drones.
August Kohler	August is absolutely willing to be a shield. Taking the middle section of the run-through, Dietrich's sword is brought up to block lasers, but they start melting it (the sword repairs like the armor, though more slowly) as well as further through Dietrich's armor, constantly being melted and regenerating as it just powers through, nose and mouth both bloody. August's primary goal is to keep lasers off where the girls don't have 'riot shields', and charge for the core. They won't want him to destroy it. And maybe they can learn something from it if they keep it intact. If the lasers prove to be a problem and he can reach the emitters with tre giant sword, he'll strike at them, but otherwise, August is trying to find a control area, or wires he can unplug, or something to shut this down.
Septette Arcubielle	The lone Deep One gets thoroughly fucked over by Staren, the girls, and finally by a few slowpoke drones cratering the spot where its liquefying body lay just for good measure. Staren's (and 17's, if he goes looking for a stress-ball) search comes up mostly, though not entirely, empty; the Deep Ones seem to care more about killing than they caree about living, so the only ones still around at this point are those too wounded to seek out prey on their own. Some of them say staticky, incomprehensible things at him; maybe a defiant curse, maybe a false plea for mercy. Most just go for the desperation attack. The LASER RAVE isn't sufficiently intense to stand up to both sabotage and a crazy teenager willing to beefwall through it; as the girls intuited, its own walls have to be more or less laser-proof. Once most of the lasers are shot out, the only real challenge is making it back outside while the crab-fabber tries to headbang them loose, though some well-placed sabotage grenades or some judiciously torn-out wiring will put a stop to that too. With the core successfully nabbed, the miner-rebels disable the force-field isolating the neighborhood from the rest of the city and start making their escape to whatever secret boltholes they keep through the teleporter, leaving the civilians to return to their prior lives. As communications are re-established, the second phase of the shitfest immediately begins: the drones briefly shut down, then reboot with glowing purple lines running along their vertices. Their Boston Dynamics klutziness is replaced with lethally coordinated and slickly optimized grace; they start doing honest-to-god three-dimensional acrobatic maneuvers, switching to armor-shredding 'Kill' mode when targeting Elites, and laying down fire in intelligent flushing and suppressing patterns instead of dumbly aimbotting. If they felt like it, the Elites could hold out quite a while- but there's no sense in it at this point; nothing left to be gained aside from looting or stealing the crab-fabber. Dave Grimes stays behind just long enough to give 17 a thin-lipped nod and say a few words over the radio. His demeanor is controlled, but his eyes are red. There's no more dust on his face.